Facebook is secretly working on huge improvements to its as yet untapped search engine, with the project being spearheaded by a former Google engineer.

Facebook is secretly working on huge improvements to its as yet untapped search engine, with the project being spearheaded by a former Google engineer.

Bloomberg cited anonymous sources at the company, who revealed that Facebook is hoping to make it significantly easier to search through status updates and shared content, as well as anything that has been “liked” using Facebook's buttons across the web.

The project is being worked on by 24 Facebook engineers, led by Lars Rasmussen, an ex-Google employee, hinting at the rivalry between the two internet firms.

The move is largely seen as an attack on Google's dominance in the search engine market, a retaliation to Google's entry into social networking last year with Google+, which many people see as the biggest threat to Facebook.

Google+ already has a fairly advanced search feature, leaving Facebook to rely on a partnership with Microsoft for Bing search results, which has not been fully explored or monetised.

Facebook remains the dominant social network, however, and if it can develop a true social search engine that takes advantage of the huge amount of user content and data at its disposal it could become a major feature that helps retain its users and steal back some lost to Google.